Can art help those suffering from depression to navigate their way to mental well-being? Poet Ben Okri thinks so; he is the patron of a new organisation being launched this weekend which aims to encourage more people who suffer from mental health problems to join groups that discuss and perform poetry, fiction and art.

The new initiative, Mental Fight Club, was the brainchild of Sarah Wheeler. She suffers from severe depersonalisation disorder and had gone through several months of ill-health culminating in a very difficult Christmas in 2002. "That night I was suddenly catapulted from depression to euphoria. But I had learned that the euphoric phases could be dangerous too, so instead of going with it I picked up a book. It was Ben Okri's great meditation on the predicaments that we face as humans, Mental Fight. He seemed to be saying that if we can face these predicaments, one of them being mental illness, then we can win through."

Wheeler held a party to celebrate the end of the depressive phase of her illness. "Family, friends, people from the group therapy in which I had been involved, they all came, and six of us recited the first section of Ben Okri's poem. And we just carried on meeting afterwards because of the response to the poem. I started to think that these meetings might be a way of drawing creatively on mental illness."

Then Wheeler saw the film Fight Club. "It was about how we try and keep our repressed, violent emotions separate from society, and it had a lot to say about how we connect with mental illness and I came up with the name." Okri is enthusiastic about the project. "He wrote to us saying, 'The idea of Mental Fight Club is quite wonderful. I'm jealous. I should have thought about it myself.'"

The group is open to all - half of those who attend have either suffered from mental illness or were carers of people with mental health issues. Wheeler feels that MFC "has been a way of creating something inspirational out of an illness that almost wrecked my life".

Each event organised by MFC is different. Often the group will fuse together the work of two or more artists. The international pianist, Elena Riu, is a member. "The first event I attended was in a crypt in Southwark, there was a combination of music from Nick Cave, Joni Mitchell and classical musicians, and then, in the middle of it all, sat a small pet rabbit. It was packed, and the atmosphere was very special. Many of those involved are in distress, but Sarah has created an atmosphere where people can be truly creative and do not feel that it is taboo to talk about mental illness. It is non-hierarchical, anyone can get involved in the structure of a performance."

Photographer Stephen Burrows was drawn into Mental Fight Club as one of Wheeler's main carers when her illness was in a manic-depressive phase. "Sarah's recovery has been all about integrating with other people and that is what the organisation does so well. Having suffered from it myself in the past, I know depression wants to get you on your own, isolate you, and something like Mental Fight Club makes you open up and be with people. It celebrates mental well-being, not only dealing with mental illness."

The chief executive of the mental health charity, Turning Point, Lord Abedowale, is also supportive. "Mental Fight Club is about connecting the disconnected. It provides a place for people to fight the stigma and isolation around mental illness. I am proud to be involved. The event I went to was challenging, moving and absolutely full."

This weekend MFC launches as a public organisation with an ambitious, free, audiovisual presentation of the first section of Okri's poem. Wheeler now has a new challenge. "We have a quest - to find seven other groups of people to create their own audiovisual interpretations of the other seven sections of the poem. Then we would like to present the whole poem as a one-day event. The first rule of Mental Fight Club is you can tell anyone and everyone about it."

About this article

Healing verses

This article appeared on p9 of the G2 section of the Guardian
on Monday 18 April 2005.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 11.25 EDT on Tuesday 19 April 2005.
It was last modified at 11.25 EST on Thursday 3 November 2005.
It was first published at 11.25 EST on Thursday 3 November 2005.